


What happened between me and Cas

by AthenaErrata



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Coming Out, Confessions, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Episode: s05e04 The End, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, Episode: s13e06 Tombstone, M/M, Sam Winchester Knows, Season 13 Castiel and Dean Winchester Reunion, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 09, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:27:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24035038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AthenaErrata/pseuds/AthenaErrata
Summary: Dean tells SamThis is an imagined interlude of Dean telling Sam about his relationship with Cas set just after Season 11 ep 19 The Chitters (yes the one with the gay hunter couple).Im new to SPN - watched the whole thing during a lockdown binge (til season 14)  This is a version of a sexual/romantic relationship between Dean and Cas that fits behind what we see onscreen (kinda sorta). Generally the point of fanfic for me is the sex, but the sex tends to go off and get all interesting. There's a lot of the Sam and Dean interaction too. Dean retells much of his relationship with Cas spanning through the events of Season 4,5,6,9. There's retelling  of incidents taking place during The End and what happened after that time when Cas was working at the Gas'n'Sip - Heaven Cant WaitOh and you get a happy ending set in the season 13 reunion episode Tombstone.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	1. Opening up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean tells Sam about his relationship with Cas. Its set in Season 11 just after the gay hunters episode which acts as a catalyst. This chapter covers the opening part of Cas and Dean, it fits closely into canon.

Set just after Season 11 ep 19 The Chitters: the one with gay hunter couple

“So those two huh? Can you believe…” Dean isn’t sure what his tone implies, scoffing at the queers or wonderment at seeing a happy couple heading off into their personal sunset. Hunters happy.

“Yeah” says Sam, he’s smiling, “it’s nice to see someone get out of this life happy.”

“Happy?” He quizzes, still unsure where Sam’s head is at.

“Yeah, imagine…being with someone, someone you love, sharing this, this, life, hunting together. Could be worse don’t you think?”

Dean swallows hard, a lump of feeling in his throat. Feelings he’s never shared with his brother, secrets he keeps that lock him in, that make him angry and resentful. He looks at Sam. There’s nothing there, no scorn, no contempt. Two guys, together like that and Sam’s just ... okay with it. Sam is okay with it. Fuck, if it doesn’t want to make him scream. Or laugh. Or both.

“You don’t think it’s...” He gestures helplessly with his hands"...like off? Gross, you know, two guys... doing it?”

Sam shrugs at him in the sheepish the way he has nowadays when their differences come up. He looks down a long beat clearly trying to decide whether this disagreement is worth it and then looks straight back at him.

“No I don’t Dean. It's not gross. They love each other, like each other, have sex with each other. What’s it to me that its two guys, instead of a guy and a girl? Do you really think it matters?”

Dean’s lost for words for a moment. “Er yeah right…guess you’re the college boy and all.” It comes out of his mouth like a reflex. The usual taunting, he doesn’t know why he does it. “Dad hated that kind of thing” he adds, salt to the wound. “Prissy pansy boys…”

Sam side-steps the argument, “well I’m not Dad. And besides neither ‘prissy’ nor ‘pansy’ seems to apply to those two. They’re just two guys.”

Dean nods, yeah, just two guys.

On the way home Dean realises he needs to talk to Sam, really talk. To tell him about Cas, what happened with Cas. With him and Cas.

Dean's quiet driving back, he’s always quiet these days. But there’s a quality to it. Sam senses his brother’s thinking hard. Maybe its about their father. Or about them. How different they are. These days they are such a team that often weeks go by before they are brought up short by their differences. Dean’s done so much for him that Sam hates how much Dean exasperates him.

But he does, exasperate him. This no-homo thing is just yet another thing between them, how instinctively different they are. A reminder of how outside he felt as a child in his family. Dean and Dad, like peas in a pod: hunting and guns and violence. And Sam, not really part of it. He finds it hard to reconcile that Dean with his brother’s gentleness, his sweetness. How much Dean cares for him, puts Sam above everything else. His brother infuriates him with his attitudes, his habits, and yet Dean is… he’s not just that crap. The best of him is something entirely else.

Sam sighs scrubbing at his eyes, he’s tired and he doesn’t want to go on this mental roundabout again. Dean, Dean, the weirdness of the two of them, so apart, so different and yet so damn close. When they get home it’s a relief. Dean’s still brooding and Sam is dreading the dark mood that's sure to follow, the drinking. Sam is glad he’ll get to escape soon, before whatever is brewing inside his brother boils over.

  
“Er..Im tired, its late” Sam doesn’t want a part of what looks like a discontented bender on the horizon. Dean's tense, his foot's been tapping, that agitated restlessness that is like a personality trait with him is ramping up. Sam knows the signs, his brother’s gearing himself up for something.

“Please Sammy, I need..” Dean breaks off, takes a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about something." Dean steels himself.

"Its important and if we don’t do it tonight, I don’t think I'll ever do it.”

His brother's tone sends an alert and Sam relents.

\---x---

They’re all set up, the night's closing in and they are sitting on the Impala. Dean insisted he wanted to go elsewhere for this, so they have a cooler of beers and a view. It’s like old times. Dean’s kidding about, shooting the breeze. Sam knows displacement when he sees it.

“Look Dean, I’m here, you said you had something important to tell me, so stop stretching it out. Tell me...whatever it is.”

Dean goes very, very still. Looking down at the beer in his hands. He clears his throat once, twice. “So um...you know those guys…” He shakes his head and takes another breath.

“No its not about them…” Dean struggles for words, “I don’t really know how to tell you this or why Im even telling you about it. But me and….” He takes another deep breath.

“It's about me and Cas,” he manages.

Sams' eyes fly up. There’s a long, long beat of silence. "Yeah" Dean says softly “me and Cas.”

Sam stares at his brother puzzled, “you and Cas ..." he prompts

Dean sighs casting about him. “I don’t even know where to start Sammy.”

“Well how about just anywhere, but stop with all the stalling or God help me..”

“Sammy…” suddenly his brother looks near tears in a way that makes Sam heart clench. This side of Dean, this side, its so rare.

“Sammy, Cas and I.. we.. we had a thing once.”

“A thing!?”

“Please just let me talk ok? Or I'll never get it all out. And I don’t even know what 'it all' is, so just... give me a moment.”

Sam nods okay. His mind's reeling, thinking back to Dean's desperation trying to break Cas free from Lucifer.

“Today, after those guys, I thought, at least the gay bit would be ok, but its not just that, with Lucifer…maybe Cas is gone for good.”  
Dean takes a huge swig at his bottle.

“Cas and I, me and Cas. We…”

“Are you still?” Sam breaks in.

Dean shakes his head “no, not for years now, but…” there’s pain in Dean's voice.

“When Cas raised me, not immediately, in the early days we started sleeping together. Not sleeping, sleeping.” Dean colours. “God I wanted him.”

“Back when he was still connected to heaven?” Sam’s tone is incredulous.

Dean's voice is almost a whisper, “before everything, before the green room, before, all of it. Cas’ first act of rebellion was wanting to be with me.”

“I thought angels ..um.. couldn’t?”

The pain in Dean’s voice is even more apparent. “They cant, not really”, he rasps out choked, “but it wasnt just the sex, it was about...wanting…”

Sam stares open-mouthed at his brother whose words are coming faster now.

“It was just..this connection.. this attraction…and he knew me, I mean, he knew every part of me, knew all of it, and still... And I..I wanted him, it was beyond… Or ..we wanted and it happened…and then he was gone…off for re-education in heaven. Dicks! And so that’s why ... or maybe its just part of why ... he helped us against Zachariah ... against all of them. Back then, when we were done for.”

Sam can’t remember the last time he saw Dean cry. Emotional sure, angry often. But Dean's crying now.

“Sam, he gave up everything for me, for us, and for what? We haven’t been together in years. Right now, he probably thinks, you know, Amara and me… "

Dean gathers himself trying to shake off how much he hates the thought of Cas thinking his connection to Amara is more that it is. He'd tried to tell Cas exactly that earlier in their own fucked-up way. For all the world he'd sounded like a husband telling his wife he's got a meaningless crush on the new temp. Maybe that was why Cas had let Lucifer in? Or was it after the cage? He's not sure, but either way, it feels even worse now. Of all the wrongs they've done each other, this one's minor, but it feels foul. He needs to try and tell this story in some sort of order though.

“After he left heaven we started seeing each other, I don’t know what you’d call it. Sex. Lovers.” He looks faintly embarrassed.

“Dating? But I …I don’t know, but..I... we did it all wrong and before we could sort it out he’d gone all ‘Im God now’ and then…” Dean sighs shaking his head.

“God...Dean. What about now?”

“I don’t know Sam. I – I” He sighs heavily. “I don’t know what I feel really. But I can tell you one thing. Whatever is going on with this Amara chick, it doesn’t come close to what I feel for Cas. I don’t know what we are, friends, brothers…”

“More?”

“I don’t know that we can have more Sam. There’s always something...the Mark, that really fucked things up, he couldn’t stand to be around it. It pained him, literally. And I.."

Dean remembers how he behaved with Cas under the Mark's influence and closes his eyes against the shame. He's not telling Sam that. He can't tell anyone that. He tries a new tack

"And before that, when he was human, I let him down, badly.” That thread of thought is no better. Regret, shame, it's just everywhere. He stops talking, trying to quell the sick feeling he gets when he thinks of all the things he wishes he'd done differently.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At first, I was ashamed, being with a guy. I thought you’d think less of me.”

“You're an idiot”

Dean winces, yeah always the idjit, that's him.

Sam punches his arm lightly trying to show some kind of solidarity. “Just so you know, you're my brother. I don’t think less of you, wouldn’t have, ever.”

“Maybe if I had told you, I wouldn’t have made such a mess of it.”

“Is it really such a mess?”

“Oh you wouldn’t believe…I've been an ass. Cas has been an idiot. There’s the guy thing.” Dean bows his head.

“It's good to talk to you about it and see you be okay about it. But honestly? Im not okay with it. Dad did a number on me, I know I like guys and girls that way. But acting on it with a guy. Having other people know…I feel..like they are laughing at me. And Cas, being with me, maybe it shamed him too, I know it cost him..”

“Do angels really get sexual orientation like that?” Sam asks.

Dean shakes his head: “No, angels don’t really care about sexual orientation, they don’t really get sex. Cas having sex, wanting it, and with a human - that was an issue.”

The pain in Dean’s voice hurts to hear. Dean tries to recover brushing himself down with a: “well it's a long, long, time ago now.”

But Sam stays leaned back against Baby and says: “we have beer, we have all night. Tell me what happened.”

On Dean's silence he adds. “Tell me what happened tonight, and tomorrow we can act like this never happened and I’ll never mention it again -unless you want me to.”

So Dean starts talking.

  
\---x---

The first time I met Cas I was terrified. He was terrifying. The lights, the noise and then this guy strides in with nothing we could do against him. His power, that electricity all around him, like a giant wave of static. And his eyes on me. I remember within all that still finding him hot. But that wasn’t it really. That wasn’t it at all. What it was, was him seeing me, every part of me, laid out bare to him. Nothing I could hide, nothing I could cover up. ‘You don’t think you deserve to be saved’. And just knowing, in my gut, that this being had seen it all: every dirty thought, every selfless act. All of it. And he was just there, looking at me.

I remember him up in my space, crowding me in Bobby’s kitchen. Me terrified and weirdly turned on. Why do those two things go together sometimes? Confusing as hell, especially with Cas. He was confusing in every way. Part of me felt total awe and amazement. That anyone had come for me at all, that anyone would try to help, to help _me_. That he was trying to teach me: showing me the past, telling me about the seals, about the future what lay ahead. Another part of me felt…camaraderie? I don’t know. Cas and I, we are the same, soldiers, with shitty dads, trying to do things differently. Or maybe that came later..

  
It was with Anna that Dean first starts to realise quite the conundrum he is getting into. Before that he’d thought he was a bit attracted to the angel that had saved him and so what? A bit star struck, OK, a lot star struck, but there’s not really any existential angst to go with 'when I’m around this guy my pants feel tight' for Dean. Crushes come, crushes go. Crushes on men are a bit more complicated in that they generally carry echoes of his father’s disgust but: same old, same old. Anna gives him his first inkling into what's wrong with falling for an angel. She makes him realise that angels can’t feel, can’t really want. So whatever he had thought might be going on in the heat between him and Castiel it is probably just going on in his own twisted head and his alone. He is misunderstanding the intensity between them. Misreading that sense that they are always teetering at the moment, the one just before you tear each others’ clothes off. Angels don’t feel.

And therein comes the great cosmic joke: that just as he kisses Anna in front of Castiel, Cas has his first clear sense of what he wants from Dean. He wants to experience that. A kiss, passion, Dean’s mouth, his lips. Before that Castiel has not been able to get a clear sense of his own confusion. Having this human he’s saved. This defiant, difficult man who rages at him over the injustice of it all, instead of accepting his role gratefully and graciously. Dean Winchester defies Cas' expectations of how his mentorship of a human will proceed. No gratitude, no respect. Instead, his own shocking admission of doubt and sympathy after the Samhain fiasco – what has gotten into him to confide something that dangerous to anyone? His feelings, nascent and dim, blaze into strange life on seeing Dean kiss Anna. To see feelings like that: complicated, messy, painful. And to feel for the first time in his existence that want. It all happens just as Dean sees him more clearly through Anna’s eyes: a cold, obedient, utterly ruthless, enforcer of celestial will. A being without mercy, pity or passion. But now something in Castiel just wants…more.

Heaven had known, of course, and demoted Cas accordingly. So he has no say in the decision to pressure Dean into torturing Alistair. Why won't they listen to him? He would be the one to know best, he was the one to raise Dean from Hell. And so he knows everything about the man. Every thought, experience, feeling he rebuilt from Dean’s molecules. The bond this has left still gives him more direct insight into Dean than is possible for other angels. He knows that being asked to torture again would devastate Dean. The man is clinging to a fading hope that there is something good inside him amidst all the filth and horror. Heaven’s endorsement means something to Dean, and taking that away will likely shatter him.

That bond has also left a trace of feelings and wants that lie entirely at odds with his celestial nature. So, after all of it, when the angels refuse to heal Dean’s battered body, battered by Alistair when the trap goes wrong, Castiel commits his first defiance. He goes to see Dean in hospital. Against orders, he is at Dean’s bedside, because Dean needs someone and there is no one else. And because he needs to be with Dean. He rolls that unfamiliar feeling around inside himself. What does it mean to say an angel needs anything? To say that he needs to be with Dean? His father ordered him to raise Dean, to take Dean into his charge. Castiel believes that. Heaven is falling apart and Castiel is at sea, who to believe, how to proceed?

Whatever the provenance of his other orders, Castiel believes that his father has charged him with saving this man. He is meant to be here, at this bedside. And it feels right.

Dean opens his eyes to find Cas there. The whole ugly mess comes back to him. Angels are dicks alright, but he is glad not to be alone. And, for once, when the tears come, he is too beaten to even try to hold them back. Of course all they want from him is his ability to hurt, his capacity for violence. What else would anyone want from him? It's what he is for. To find out that it is all his fault to start with and all on his shoulders til the end ... he should have known, but it's...too much. And why not cry? The angel knows it all already anyway, he cant hide from Cas. He is weak and he is wrong in every way imaginable and the closest he feels to anyone is this strange being he feels understands him in ways that arent actually possible. Cas' eyes fill with empathy, he tries to take away the sting of it: ‘it is not blame, its fate’.

“Only one who gets me is you right now and you're nothing but a damn robot"

Cas furrows his brow at that. “I know I cant really feel” he starts “not the way you do, but you..move me.”

Dean looks up at Sam, determined not to back out of this confession. “And then he stood up and kissed me. I was still all banged up with a ventilator strapped under my nose. Wasn’t sexy, wasn’t even sweet. His lips on my lips, just the once, gentle as anything. Best kiss I ever had.”

He rouses himself from the memory.

“Sorry this story is coming out slow. You probably just want me to get to the bit where we start boning.”

Sam makes his ew face. “Kinda not.” Sam cracks another beer open. “Then why are you telling me all this?”

“Cos I guess if you want to understand the why with me and Cas, Its more about what he meant to me, what I meant to him. Its more about that, than about how hot he was and that I couldn’t look at him without wondering what it’d be like to touch him.”

Sam raises his eyebrows.

Dean shrugs: “yeah I wondered, the first time you met Cas you shook his hand. It astonished me just that you touched him just like that. I spent forever trying to work out how to ask you what he feels like without it sounding weird. Was he like stone, like a person? Did he feel warm or cold? Did he feel alive? I never touched him, not his skin, not once, until he was Jimmy that time and then it just felt so off. Cas isn’t Jimmy.”

Sam nods.

“But I need to speed this up don’t I?”

“Its okay Dean, just tell it how you want.”

His brother smirks: “so does that mean I get to give you epic descriptions of how we did it and where?”

“Jerk”

Dean takes a sip of his beer and closes his eyes. Sam feels like he’s finally wandered into the realm of his brother’s most private thoughts. He shocked, and a little humbled, to see what’s in there: its not really all Vegas and strippers is it?

“Anyway and that was kind of it. The next time I saw him he'd been re-educated in heaven.”

“That was it?” Sam prods. “But you made it sound like, in the green room, Cas did it for you?”

“Yeah, I guess that was dumb, he didn’t. We just had that one little kiss in the hospital before then. It wasn’t really anything.”

Sam’s brow creases, something isn’t right in this story. “But Dean, why’d you say..”

“I got confused, its all so long ago now. There wasn’t anything else happened between us before the green room.”

Then Sam gets it. “Except that one little kiss that you just described as the best kiss you ever had?”

Dean's gone totally quiet.

“Come on man, you owe me all of it. What aren’t you telling me?”

His brother stares at his hands, peeling the label from his bottle. Sam waits, wondering

“I told you all of it Sammy”, Dean says. “There really wasn’t anything before the green room apart from that. Just…” He swallows hard “..in the green room. Before Cas decided to help us… the things I said.” More swallowing “… I called him a soulless bastard, told him to stuff heaven, that he wasn’t really alive. It made him decide to help us.”

Suddenly Dean looks at him hard, direct. “To this day Sam, I don’t know. Did I manipulate him? Did I say it all just to push the right buttons? How far did I know, at that time, that’s what Cas wanted, that’s what would make him go our way? I know I didn’t spare a single thought for what I was asking him to give up. His home, his place, heaven. Everything, Sam, everything he had. He told me he’d be hunted. He told me, and I pushed and I pushed. I pushed where I knew he was weak, to get what I wanted: for me, for you and me. And he did it and what did he get in return? Even if I believed it then with my whole heart, do I still believe it now? If we end up…if we end up back there in the end, did Cas give all that up just to give us a few more years before the final fight goes down?"

Sam’s speechless. He had no idea Dean has these thoughts. Weighs up what Cas has gone through. More often than not Dean’s an ass. Good in a fight. Tough as all hell. But otherwise, while he knows Dean’s got more going on inside than he ever lets on to anyone, he has never heard him say it. When he talks about what they do, its all ‘kick it in the ass’, keep grinding, keep fighting. Rarely the costs, and never the cost to Cas. Dean has never once acknowledged the angel’s pain.

“God Dean, I didn’t know. So you feel responsible?”

Dean shrugs: “I do and I don’t. Cas is centuries old, I’m not his keeper. I know I treat him like a child, he can be an idiot with human things, handles choices like a baby. But yeah, sometimes on a dark night I wonder if he would have been better off if I had been an angel condom and you’d worn Lucifer to the ball.”

They look out into the night. Sam’s too stunned to wonder what will come next.

Dean starts taking again. “So yeah Cas died, for the first time.” He shuts his eyes tight and swallows. “And Lucifer rose”

Sam adds “for the first time”

“Yeah”

They are both quiet, Lucifer is out there riding Cas.

“Dean don’t stop, get it all out there for once.”

Dean balls his hands to fists. Lucifer knows, he’s sure Lucifer knows what he feels for Cas. Lucifer is going to use it to his advantage. He needs to get his head straight, needs to let Sam help him get his head straight, if they are ever going to get Cas back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's turns of phrase nicked from the show here. Obviously the 'you dont think you deserve to be saved'. and 'kick it in the ass'. But also angel condom and wearing Lucifer to the ball.


	2. Having sex with angels is just different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter Dean tells Sam about the early part of Dean/Cas. There's sex, but not the usual way sex is described. Partly set in season 5 particularly Episode 3 Free to Be You and Me. 
> 
> There is a reference to past rape/sexual abuse for anyone wanting to avoid that kind of thing.

Cas hadn’t been resurrected long, he hadn’t been gone long either. But Dean remembers the wrench in his gut at the thought of Cas exploding into chunks. Cas refused to speak about it, like he’d never spoken about his re-education in heaven. Or maybe Dean never properly asked. There are so many things he’s never really done or done properly.

Memories of that first solo hunt with Cas make him smile. They had gotten along so well. It had just been... fucking awesome was what it had been. Ridiculous, hilarious Cas. And that brothel he’d taken Cas to on his undertaking to not let Cas die a virgin…He had thought the time without Sam would be unyieldingly awful and instead he was having fun. Being around Cas was the most intense, unpredictable rush. Like being a child again, everything new and different. Unexpected. They'd gotten back to the hotel with Cas a little dejected. Unable to understand what he’d done wrong at the brothel.

"Isnt sex supposed to be about caring?"

"Yeah" Dean had breathed, "but its also just about how it feels."

Cas gives him one of his looks. And Dean makes up his mind in that instant. Just to give him a kiss, to let Cas feel what its like. They are standing far too close, as ever, and the hilarity of the car ride is giving way to that buzzing sexual tension he always feels around the angel.

"Let me show you."

Cas gives the tiniest nod of assent and Dean feels the ocean roaring in his ears as he dips his head, cupping Cas’ jaw, to brings their lips together. His lips are brushing against lips he spends too long pretending he doesn’t think about. It takes a while, kissing gently, softly, before Cas sighs and Dean takes that as an invitation to explore a bit more thoroughly.

He feels foolish, what if angels just cant actually respond? But he's wanted Cas too damn long and he's too far gone to back out now. He lets himself explore. Then murmurs, "just close your eyes and see how it feels".

Cas does just that and for several moments they stand in stillness their mouths almost delicate on each other. Dean shifts his body weight forward to press into the warmth of Cas and the levee breaks - Cas clutches at him in surprise. Their breathing gets faster and Dean can feel that first tingle of sexual response go through them. Cas’ eyes fly open in surprise. Dean looks at him, checking in:

"Good?"

"Yes"

"Can I?"

The angel seems dazed, but nods and Dean kisses him again.

"I'm not expecting anything" he rushes "just wanted you to feel what its like, you know, kissing."

But Cas’ arms are around him and the heat between them ratchets up with surprising speed. Without meaning to Dean has backed Cas up against the wall and they are kissing frantically. Cas is moaning against his mouth and he takes the opportunity to lick inside. The angel groans. Fuck yeah, there's no thoughts.

Suddenly they are just pressing against each other desperate for friction, for sensation. He unbuttons Cas’ shirt eager to get at the skin beneath, burying his nose in the angel's neck, mouthing along his collar bone, tasting his skin. He's never kissed a guy before and kissing Cas feels amazing. He mouths the stubble of his chin loving the feel of it against his lips and tongue.

"When you said sex I assumed you meant with a female?"

Dean stops, "yeah, so did I, but this is…?"

"Good its good. Ive never really felt anything like it. Ive never even..." Cas gestures to his pants.

Dean palms the sizable erection in there and grins. Oh yes angels can definitely respond sexually. Cas groans "that feels, it feels…" He seems helpless in the throes of his responses.

Dean smiles at him. They are on the bed now and the angel looks debauched. His mouth kiss-swollen, eyes dilated and his shirt rumpled and open.

"I've never been hard before," Cas wonders.

"What, never!?"

"No", Cas frowns puzzled, "it feels... nice, feels... needy."

"Shh too much talking."

Dean pushes them both back onto the bed pushing their bodies together. They let their bodies do the talking for a while until finally drawing back from each other panting. Dean feels a bit awkward, he hasn’t really thought this through beyond the first impulse. Now he wonders where its going.

Cas folds a hand over his laying them both on his chest over his heart. He looks dazed and rumpled. "That was incredible," he smiles. “Dean, its ok, we don’t need to do any more than that. I know how that is for you.”

"You do?" Dean is somewhere between surprised and defensive.

"I raised you Dean, until that moment I know all of you. I know what happened. I expect you don’t want to go further than this, not just because its my last night on earth.” Cas answers placidly.

Dean stares at him. "You – you know about that…what happened?"

"Yes. I know what happened, I know how you felt. Everything. I got to experience feelings by rebuilding you. I got to experience the feelings you felt. Maybe that’s why I can feel this now."

Dean nods, mute with shock. He’s never told a soul about that, his father found out and his disgust was more than enough to bury it deep. But here is Cas and he just knows … everything. He's sort of guessed Cas knows everything, but having it confirmed is something else. Plus he hadn’t really got round to realising what 'knowing everything' would include.

  
\---x---

"What!" Sam’s shock makes Dean flinch "What!!?"

"Back when I used to leave you, you know, with the clowns. It wasn’t to chase girls. Dad had left us without any money, at all. We were hungry, about to be kicked out of the motel so I..”

He cant say it, not to Sam who is looking at him in anguish. So he starts trying to cover: “it wasn’t so bad, just a few times.”

But the memories flood him. Getting on his knees in front of strangers in smelly toilets. Rough hands on his jaw. “Open that pretty mouth boy”. Gagging, his eyes watering. The first time some filthy bastard grabs his hair hard, forcing Dean not to move as he comes down his throat. That feeling, like he’s gonna choke on it. The humiliation at taking the money, selling himself for other peoples’ kicks. His hands are shaking and suddenly he cant hold the words back.

"I wasn't much more than a child Sammy. Telling myself it wasn’t so bad, people do it all the time. Giving suck jobs, cos Dad had left us again and I'd fucked up with the money."

Sams adam's apple bobs convulsively. "God Dean."

"Don’t Sammy, please just…don’t."

"Dean!"

"I don’t want to… Im not going to talk about it. Its done, its over."

"But"

"Its over, only reason I'm telling you is cos Cas knew. Not just the suck jobs...by the end of it I got jumped. Group of guys held me down…they..” He cant quite say the word 'raped' but he sees Sam get it.

“Dad found out sometime later. His disgust with me. Back then I thought then it was about me being with guys, maybe it was more about him having neglected us so much that that it happened in the first place. Hell, maybe he was just angry I let myself get jumped, forgot to 'guard the perimeter'. Who the hell knows.”

Dean shrugs helplessly and wipes at his eyes. "Doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter."

Sam wants to yell and rage that it does, that no one should go through all this, but he senses his brother’s close to breaking and anything he’d read as pity would be the end of what is happening here. So he keeps schtum.

"Long story short, I was pretty fucked up. I liked guys as well as girls, I knew that. No matter what Dad thought about it, I might have been okay with it. Hell knowing I liked guys too was part of why Id thought doing the suck jobs would be ok you know? I thought it’d be like sex, and basically: I like sex. But sex for money…its different. It was degrading. And then dad, he was so…angry…and disappointed. I just felt…ashamed. And after that I couldn’t...not with a man, even a man I wanted. Not until Cas."

\---x---

Cas never pushes. Can what he and Cas do with each other those first nights really be described as sex? They touch and kiss, explore each others bodies. Cas has learning to do, and he’s endlessly, joyfully, curious about it. It's both totally weird and totally wonderful. It's like nothing he’s ever seen or heard of to have Cas totally engrossed in exploring him. Reeling off obscure anatomical names for those areas that, after protracted inspection, Cas decides are his absolute favourites: that bit just under Dean’s collar bone. The dip behind the jut just above his hip bone. The way the tiny hairs on Deans lower back whorl into a complex spiral. Intense study of how Dean’s nipples respond to Cas’ touch, to his tongue, his breath, his teeth.

Dean loves to play gruff impatience in the face of all this idiosyncrasy. “Come here and let me fuck you already Cas,” he growls, but the angel is hard to distract.

“Ive never done any of this and its just…” the smile is beatific, “its amazing.”

Cas has whisked them off to a huge bed in an empty house for the night and they have time for once and the angel wants to use it. The angel feeds him ice cream and warm cherry pie in bed and Dean gets a clearer perspective on how Cas sees the world.

"Its all so complex Dean. I can see all the patterns, the layers. Like colours - or more like music really, your soul, your aura, the molecules. The processes for turning food into you."

"OK, so right now you are watching me make poop?!"

"No, well, yes, technically. But no: see I can see the heat of the pie and the cold of the ice cream, I can see them mix in your mouth and when you swallow I can see it start to join you become part of you. Its complex and beautiful. Its.."

"It sounds insane. Doesn’t it drive you crazy to see all of that?"

Cas’ forehead wrinkles, trying to explain then he gives it up. "No, I can decide a bit what to focus on, like tuning a radio. Or maybe more like you can listen to music and drive, you switch your focus. But…well..more so."

"But basically you are watching me make poop...come on...say it..." Dean teases.

Cas huffs out a breath, knowing there is no other way out of it, he intones deadpan:"Yes Dean, I am watching you make poop." Dean snorts.

Dean tries to take it in, but for the moment is stalled by the contrast between the Cas he can see and touch, the Cas currently absent-mindedly licking ice cream off his chest and what Cas is actually saying. Cas feels utterly familiar and totally alien simultaneously. It’s a headfuck.

"But now, now I can feel too. Without that, sex doesn’t really make sense." Cas looks like he's won the lottery.

Dean smiles, he cant imagine sex not making sense. He doesn’t understand Cas really, but he’s gotten under Dean's skin in a way Dean cant fathom. He's just so damned adorable like this. That messy head, the glowing eyes, that totally open smile when they are alone. Dean feels so good here in this amazing bed, warm, naked, eating pie and ice cream with a lack of self-consciousness he cant remember ever really experiencing. Cas' tongue is doing something to his nipple that’s turning him on again. Fuck how does that keep happening?

Cas gives an mmm in line with his rising desire. "See that?" He murmurs, "if you cant feel it, it makes no sense at all…" Dean pulls him up for a kiss and Cas is straddling him. Their breathing mounts to gasps and as they grind. Cas smiles wonderingly,

“If you cant feel what we are doing, this just looks absurd. Its like ...watching someone open and close a drawer a hundred times. Angels wonder why you do it, its boring to watch even, but when you can feel it, then... well then.."

They’ve had this conversation a few times now. Cas is blown away by the wonder of wanting and feeling, so in the middle of sex these little segues happen as he tries to piece it all together. Tries to explain it to Dean, who is managing to catch on to the incredibleness that sensation must have if you’ve never felt it before. So for now he just rolls his eyes and says:

“But I can feel what we are doing and right now it feels fantastic - so shut up and kiss me angel”

The angel happily complies, but even as their making out gets hotter and heavier Cas cant resist adding more commentary. "I feel joy" he murmurs. "I love seeing how much you like it when I do that." "That's pleasure" as Dean makes him gasp. A while later, when they are lying back panting he sighs: "satisfaction" and Dean chuckles agreement. 

And later, much later, when they are tangled up in each other with Dean on the edge of sleep, he hears Cas low rumble in his ear "I think this might be bliss". There is a stinging in Dean's eyes. He remembers Cas’ first ever orgasm leaving him overwhelmed and tearful. And jerk that he is, Dean starts laughing on reflex at the guy who cries during sex. An offended Cas is reproachful:

"You have been having orgasms since you were twelve Dean, you have had a chance to get used to how it feels, to control how you react. My whole existence, I have never felt anything close to this."

Neither have I, thinks Dean, neither have I. And he apologises, which is probably a relationship first for him.

Cas has theories as to why he can feel now. The main one being that he has a bodily form that’s wholly his. He isn’t possessing or inhabiting anyone. Jimmy Novak’s body is fully Jimmy Novak-less and according to Cas that may be a reason why he is allowed to feel within this body and to enjoy those feelings.

"So what angels inside vessels cant feel?"

"They can but, the vessel's owner is still there somewhere so nothing's really private, really yours. It is also wrong also to use the vessel in that way, so even as you feel things, there is that sense of wrongness. For an angel, that is not pleasant"

That makes sense to Dean. Another theory Cas has is that he was able to learn how to feel from or through Dean when he raised him.

“I had to learn every part of you, I felt what you felt and somehow by doing that maybe I learned how to do it for myself”.

That also makes sense to Dean, but it spooks him. There is something unutterably huge about the bond between him and Cas. If he would ever admit to anything scaring him, it isn’t the monsters under the bed. What really scares Dean is what's happening between him and Cas.

Cas’ final theory is that it was all God's will. God commanded Cas raise Dean and so God intended everything that’s happened after. Dean likes this theory least. Cas likes it best. Dean suspects that that preference relates to the fact that it would make whatever is going on between them unquestionably right - at least in Cas' eyes. He suspects Cas is struggling with that one. In spite of all his delight in what they've just done, Cas is troubled too.


	3. The bit before we ended

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More on the Dean/Cas relationship. This is set in Season 6, relationship before Cas goes all God

Of course he doesn’t tell Sam all of that, so by the time hes managed a brief word-sketch Sam huffs in exasperation.

"So, after all that, all you're going to tell me is 'angel sex is weird'?"

Dean snorts, "look buddy, believe me, that’s all you want me to tell you!"

Sam raises a sardonic eyebrow, "that kinky?"

"Not kinky! Or not in the way you think"

He can't, doesn’t want, to tell Sam the all gory details, but he also doesn’t want whatever the hell Sam is thinking now to be what he thinks happened

"Look okay Im not sharing everything. Dude, you are my brother and some things..you know?! But it was initially almost innocent, just really intense. Cas was ‘unprecedented’ as an angel."

An image of Cas using his air quotes flits across his mind.

"He had a body, his own body not someone else's, and he could use it to feel things. Without that sex is just odd so he was … feeling his way through it."

Sam sniggers, "or more like you were feeling his way through it."

Dean gives his brother a wry grin. He likes that this conversation has turned into the kind of ribbing they are both more familiar with.

"Yeah, yeah so I gave him a hand with that."

"A hand!" Sam snorts.

"What are you!? Twelve!?"

Sam nudges him with a shoulder "go on."

"Yeah well. It was nice…really nice. But, you know, it wasn’t easy. As well as the sex bit, angels have an issue about relationships with humans. Cas struggled with that."

Sam looks puzzled.

"Sexual relationships with humans," Dean clarifies.

"Huh?"

Dean feels an old anger welling up just thinking about it.

"C’mon Sam, angels, total dicks, remember? All that ‘hairless ape’ crap. Me and Cas – to some of them that’s like if you’d started making out with the roadside mutt. Cas having sex at all was odd, having sex with a human was ‘scandalous’."

God when had he gotten into Cas' air quotes thing?

"It got worse later, but it troubled him even then, He must have known the shit that would come down on him for it, even if I didn’t really get it at the time... He’d get all.."

Dean makes an overdone thinking face and mimics Cas:

“'Dean what if I am abusing my position with you? You are my charge, having relations with you is not the role an angel is intended for' ... And then the whole Lucifer thing mark one went down and we fought like hell over it. So I tried, I tried to get over it goddammit. Even tried the apple pie life with Lisa and Ben."

Sam flinches, he hasn’t heard those names since Dean banished them from every conversation ever. Dean is raging, furious banging his fist down on Baby in a way he’d give Sam hell for usually. But the air goes out of him

“One of the cruellest, stupidest things I ever did was rock up at that woman's house. Shack myself up in a kid's life pretending that was what I wanted. Because I thought it was what I was supposed to want. She was decent you know? Lisa I mean. She was a good woman, patient, kind. And Ben was a good kid... And there was me play acting man-about-the-house until it inevitably fell to shit. I did wrong by them, real wrong. Real life wrong."

He sighs scrubbing at his face.

"And you know what the worst thing of it is? When I think about it, you know what I think about? I don’t think about them and what I did to them. I think about what it meant for Cas. That if I hadn’t done that, or tried to do that, maybe he would have come to me earlier. Back when he first needed my help, back when he might have asked me what to do about the war and it could all have gone down differently. That’s what I think about. I know I fixed it for Lisa and Ben...Or Cas fixed it... But it never got fixed for Cas. No one could ever fix it for Cas. For Cas it all went to shit. He opened that stupid door to purgatory and.."

Dean looks away his throat working convulsively.

“Cas has never gotten over that, over what he did. I'm not sure he ever will”

"Instead we took things up again later and rather than telling me about it, he hid it all from me. But we didn’t hide what we were doing from the angels, or we didnt hide it enough, for long enough. And that was my fault, I didn’t know, didn’t realise what would happen if they found out. I mean, I knew he was worried about it, but I..I blundered right in. I think I thought it was like the shock you and Bobby would have had in knowing about us. Seeing as he’d almost outed me to you guys a couple of times I played a little fast and loose myself. "

Dean winces thinking back to his immature ‘Im dating superman’ phase, where being with Cas was like being with a freaking god until ‘boyfriend = like a god’ turned into 'my psycho boyfriend actually thinks he is God.'

"Sam I was such an idiot. Treated Cas like a cross between a sugar daddy and my magic get-out-of-jail-free card."

Sam's eyebrows raise, he’s not sure he's following this anymore.

  
\-----------x---------

  
That’s the thing about being together with someone whose got considerably more juice than you . On the one hand its amazing, he rocks up and takes you out anywhere in the world. You have a problem, he’ll solve it, just pray to him.

"It was kind of like dating" Dean tells Sam.

"But like turbo-charged dating. Cas would show up and we could be wherever. Do anything. We went to Rome, concerts, beaches. Didn’t all work out how you might expect, but Cas had this 'trying things out' approach to figuring it out. Lovers go to bars, lets try a bar. Lovers go to Paris, Paris it is."

Sam does the mental hokey pokey trying to imagine Dean on a romantic getaway and failing.

Dean watches his face and smiles, its wistful.

"Yeah that’s basically how it went. Nine times out of ten: total bust. But god we had fun trying and there's some moments that were just…"

He doesn't tell Sam about watching the most amazing sunset with Cas up a mountainside in the middle of nowhere. The last time he’s really watched a sunset that he can remember.

Or that one perfect day on the beach with a bar in the morning and deserted cove in the afternoon.

Or when he overcame his bad experiences to go down on Cas for the first time. In a private booth at the opera no less, because what else would Dean Winchester do at the opera? And how Cas had been so pleased and so turned on he didn’t stop Dean, despite them not being warded from angel's sight. Zapping him back into their unwarded hotel room horny as teenagers. The two of them tugging clothing out of the way clothes so Dean can be inside him, hard and frantic. Cas throwing his head back and shouting his release. And that was it. Dean remembers the aftermath in that hotel bed. Both of them panting and laughing. Cas kisses him hard and breathless:

"Dean, you'll be the death of me"

"At least you'll die happy."

The look Cas gives when he responds, "yes I would die happy" is full of fervour.

And then Cas closes his eyes and his next look is full of seriousness as he says:

"I guess the truth is out now and all I can do is face it as best I can."

"What are you talking about?"

"We aren’t warded, any angel that happened to be looking will have been able to see what we were doing."

"So?"

Cas sighs: "So... what we are doing, they are not likely to approve."

"Are you ashamed?"

Already Dean is bristling, hypocrite that he is. Kind of knowing what Cas fears without really having understood the extent of things. If the shoe was on the other foot, would he have faced Sam and Bobby with anything like Cas' grace?

Cas rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Dean, more and more I am convinced I have nothing to be ashamed of. But you have to understand, I am fighting a war in heaven. What I am doing with you, this? They wont understand, they cant understand. There is no risk of pregnancy, but this is too close to abomination for many of my brothers and sisters."

Cas has never confirmed that it cost him the war, but Dean knows he lost soldiers because they could not accept that their commander was letting a human fuck him.

He’s heard the taunts enough times, the outrage that Cas chooses him at every turn, and sometimes he hears their disgust.

On days when his guilt feels overpowering, he remembers that glorious afternoon in a deserted cove just before they ended. With his forces already dwindling given heaven's outrage at him, Cas peers up at the blue sky above them with nothing but defiance on his face before he turning to Dean and saying fiercely:

"I want them to see what you do to me".

And then Cas is kissing him and letting Dean take him in front of whatever heavenly host cares to watch. Dean remembers Cas holding nothing back, his devotion and adoration for Dean out in plain sight, no shame, no defences, just Cas' moans as Dean fucks him, his sobbing gasps of "Dean, Dean" as the angel clutches at him.

And when you fuck an angel on the beach, sand does not get into awkward places. Its just sexy hot and goddamn perfect.

And then its over, they find out about Cas’ deal with Crowley. The plan to get more souls. To win the war. But the worst bit is that when Dean begs Cas later not to do it Cas tells him.

"Dean, unless I win the most decisive of victories, they will take every memory of what happened with you out of my head, even on my side there are many who want me re-educated and I just cant."

  
"Cas dont, _I_ am asking you not to"

  
"I _cant_. I don’t want to forget this.You dont understand what they will do to me"

  
\----x----

  
"So they would have reset him for it?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, or that's what Cas thought anyway"

"And that’s why you couldn’t talk him down from it?"

"I think so."

Sam feels himself reeling as things fall into place. There's been years of odd taunts and comment about the angels' feelings for Dean, his status as Dean's lapdog.

But also Dean's behaviour at the time it all went down. The look of utter betrayal on Dean’s face when they'd found out. How Cas had been unable to look at Dean and lie to him. He cant quite believe he has never figured it out before. But all that time when Cas helped them on those cases, saved them, he and Dean had been in a relationship. He just hadn't seen it, Dean had treated Castiel with brusque dismissiveness at best.

"I would never have guessed you two were involved. Not before the shit went down. After maybe, but I assumed that was because of Lisa. But before then, I mean, you just ordered him about, you know ... Dean-style"

"Yeah I did. Christ I was an ass, the only way I knew to deal with everything he was lavishing on me was to act like a brat about it. I don’t know why I did that, but the more out of my depth I felt, the shittier I got about it. He just had more juice than me on every front and while he never lorded it over me I think I was so freaked about it, I went the other way you know?"

Sam looks at him thoughtful: "You’ve never had anyone be nice to you, I guess you didn’t know how to handle it"

Dean colours, "yeah with Cas it was nice, you know, dorky and weird as hell, but it was nice. I loved being with him. I just felt so…" the word that comes to Dean's mind is 'loved' but he doesn’t say it.


	4. The Dark before Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Covers events in Season 5 The End episode. 
> 
> Gets painful, sort of graphic on the sex front, disturbing maybe, there is a point to this which I hope gets clearer in the next chapter. I do think the violence makes sense in its own twisted way.

Sam gives his brother a long assessing look. "Maybe you acted like that because you were afraid of getting hurt?"

  
There's something wry in Deans glance: "You have no idea quite how literally that is true" he murmurs.

Sam waits. Dean shifts uncomfortably.

"Dean" Sam prompts "we've got a one-night-only, no come backs, deal here. Tell me, whatever it is and I promise", he mimes zipping his mouth shut. "Never ever will I ever."

"You really wanna know? Shit gets disturbing…even for me.."

  
Sam looks at him for a long time. Whatever Dean hasn’t told him its serious, real as fuck, and even if they never speak of it again, he'll know things that he cant un-know afterwards. Does he really want that? He's not sure. But then a puzzle piece shifts into place and it makes his mind up for him.

"Dean, you know, before today, before what you told me. I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t just go after Lucifer. Kill the guy any way we can, meatsuit and all and hopefully get Cas back in some other vessel. Drove me nuts why you wouldn’t even consider the option. But now I get it. The Cas in that body, that Cas is _your_ Cas. Without the body, what we get back…even if he remembers...likelihood is, he wont feel and without that he wont be.."

"He wont be ‘Cas’ Cas" Dean says quietly.

There's a long pause. "I know its stupid" Dean goes on. "The priority should be fighting Lucifer, defeating Amara, but losing Cas…my Cas..." The 'my' comes out awkwardly like Dean cant really own it.

His brother looks so helpless, that Sam knows he will do whatever he can to try and help. If that means knowing things he’ll want to bleach his brain out from, so be it.

  
"Okay so just say it, tell me whatever it is and we'll deal... Maybe it will help?"

Dean colours. "I don’t know how much of it I can even say out loud he starts. Some of it I don’t even allow myself to think about too much because you know."

Dean mimes shooting his brains out with a big explosive sound effect to match.

"But that’s why you _should_ say it, talk it though, really look at it, analyse it."

There's such confidence in Sam’s tone, such faith in the ability to make sense of things, to understand them, that it makes Dean smile. Sam has always been the one on the side of thinking, analysing. Dean's the one who operates from his instincts, his feelings, his gut. He closes his eyes for a brief moment before saying:

"Alright then, you asked: so here goes."

  
\----x----

  
"You said maybe I acted like that because I was afraid of getting hurt. And yeah that’s true. Relationships and all that, you gotta, you know... open up and let yourself be…"

He cant quite say the word 'vulnerable' so he looks at Sam to see if Sam gets it. Sam’s nodding.

  
"But with me, its like" Dean steels himself, he can do this he can talk about this. He needs to, for Cas, even just for himself, he needs to talk about this.

"With me, its like there's part of me that wants to be hurt…that likes it. I know, I know, but I mean look at me and Cas. Its no accident right? That I fall for the one person who already knows me, all of me, because then I don’t have to do the opening up thing, cos well Im no good at that. But its also… at the time, how powerful Cas was, it was a turn on. There was this one time he laid into me and I mean really laid into me. It was about the Michael thing and Cas beat the ever-loving-snot out of me, he was..he was..fucking incandescent man. And the craziest thing was, I was hard. Fucking terrified, but turned on."

Dean steals a look over at Sam, how badly is this going down? But Sam's face is, well, its ok hes just waiting.

"Look Im not advocating domestic violence as foreplay but…I dunno but there is something about being with someone whose stronger than you, who can step into the driving seat for a little while, someone you don’t have to worry about. Maybe that’s why, at the start, I just let Cas you know ‘be the boyfriend’. Like I didn’t need to do anything but go along with things. If I didn’t like something I didn’t need to act or change anything, I could just lay back and bitch about it and he’d fix it. It was stupid because I should have pitched in. I mean there was a war going on in heaven, Cas was right there, leading it, fuck he was drowning in it, and ...I mean..we barely even talked about it. Does that even remotely sound like me ? So why did I do that?"

Sam puts it together: "Cos the first time in your life someone was taking care of you."

He's trying to cover his surprise, Dean has actual thoughts about his relationships, the whys, the wherefores. He really needs to remember more often not to drink the kool-aid that Dean puts out there about what hes like. Sam knows his brother, he really does, but Dean makes it so easy to forget that under all that bravado and dissemblance there is somebody else.

"Yeah. And so I dropped the ball man. I let Cas drown cos I was being a baby." Dean's voice is bitter, the self-loathing palpable.

Sam wants to throw his brother a life raft, stop this descent into bad feeling where he senses his brother spends most of his time.

"Dean, don’t do this. You were experiencing something for the first time, something big and so you made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone."

  
His brothers jaw is working, the feelings roiling again just under the surface as he bursts out, “but when I make mistakes people die and I cant fix it. How the hell do you forgive mistakes like that?”

  
Sam finds he's holding his breath. This is the point, the point that always comes, when Dean storms off raging or breaks shit. So he tries a new tack instead of advising Dean to let it go he just lets him to hold on to it.

"OK so maybe you cant fix it, maybe it cant be forgiven, maybe you are just a bad, bad seed who deserves nothing but pain and punishment. Maybe that’s exactly it" he says mildly and to his surprise Dean's anger abates a little.

Sam presses this advantage. "OK so I cant help wondering, and Im not endorsing the beating each other up rota that you and Cas operate, what is the really dark thing that you couldn’t possibly tell me about. Cos this, its interesting, but it smells like a distraction."

Dean's nonplussed. "What..?"

"Well all that build up and then you tell me you got an erection once? Come on…I mean" he scoffs gesturing between them "you and me? When it comes to weird, dark, shit going down, I was expecting something a little more...extra."

That little turnabout has them back at it. Dean’s impressed, Sam has cottoned on to there being something else to talk about that he really, really didn’t want to. His younger brother’s sharp that way, even Dean himself hadn’t really realised there's something else he needs to talk about.

"In that other life, you know, the one without monsters: you’re not lawyer, you’re a therapist" he quips.

Sam smirks at him. "Yeah yeah but that’s enough, now spill."

"Remember how I went to the future once?

Sam nods "uh huh..2014"

"Yeah it happened then. Croatoan virus, future me, crazy hippie Cas..."

  
\-----x----------

  
Set in 2014 Season 04: The End

Dean cant get over the hot, disgusting, stench of the place. Sanitation doesn’t really work so well in the future he guesses. He taken himself off for a tour round the camp. Its depressing: mounds of rubbish, a couple of sheds with supplies. There's dogs about helping themselves to whatever's going, he's wary of getting to close to them. They're feral, definitely not pets. He's headed back to the cabin where he has left his future self and Cas hashing over plans when he hears his own voice cry out in pain. He rushes up to the door in time to hear another cry.

He's about to burst through the door when common sense kicks in. Whatever has that guy screaming is likely to be more than a match for him. His future self is a douche, he's also one intimidating motherfucker. He knows he can be a threat, but that guy well…hes something else: hard, cold, tough. So he decides on stealth, pushes the door slightly and sneaks inside.

The room is dark, fetid really. Air con is clearly of the past and it fucking boiling in this airless room. There's a cot at the far end partly obscured by some hangings. Shafts of light from the boarded-over remains of the window fall over the bed giving him a view of his own naked body lying face up on the bed, hands shackled to what is left of an iron bedstead. He's hard and wearing a blindfold. Cas is standing at the foot of the bed equally naked. In contrast to his own massive frame, the former angel looks small, but lithe. He's holding the demon blade in one hand and whiskey bottle in the other. Dean can see fresh cuts on his future self's torso. Cas has been cutting him. From the scars on his double's chest its clear they have done this before.

  
His future self’s voice rumbles in the semi-dark "Cmon man, don’t make me wait."

  
Cas drops the knife and swigs long from the bottle before placing it down carefully.

  
Dean is rooted to the spot as he watches Cas plant himself between his doubles' legs, his weight drawing a creak from the bedsprings as it settles. With sure hands he spreads future Deans' thighs as Dean hears his other's voice again.

"Just make it hurt".

Cas gives the thigh he’s touching a pat that smacks of weary affection and replies "I know" before shoving his cock inside hard. There's no doubt it hurts, the Dean on the bed goes rigid in pain arching up, groaning. Cas pulls back and slams in again. Its quick and clearly it hurts, but Dean watches himself cum within seconds in hard, wrenching spasms. Cas withdraws almost instantly. Their bodies are sweaty and grimy in the dim light, panting.

Almost immediately, future Dean is wrenching against his restraints.

"Hand, hands" he gasps.

Cas is quick to reach up to unlock the shackles, shushing the man on the bed while he does it.

"Ive got you, youre ok, Ive got you"

He pets at future Dean and fumbles with the keys. Blood and cum mix between their joined torsos as future Dean pulls his blindfold down. He's weeping now, pulling Cas closer to him calling “Cas, Cas, Cas.” Dean doesn’t think hes ever heard his voice sound like this before. Soaked through with pain. He sounds utterly broken as he clutches at the man on top of him like he's drowning.

"I needed that ... I need you" he croaks.

Cas shushes him: "I know."

His tone is tender as he takes his partner's face in his hands making their eyes meet, his voice takes on a deeper timbre and he intones gravely "Dean" before kissing him.

Dean doesn’t know which part of what he's just seen is more intimate, the fucking or this sadly desperate aftermath. It's both horrifying and heart-breaking.

Dean stumbles out of the room, not caring if they hear him and walks almost immediately into Chuck.There's a wry, sly, expression on Chuck's face as he takes in Dean's shock.

"So you got an eyeful" he comments.

Dean doesn’t know what to say, its clear this is just something that happens here.

"Give them a few minutes and they’ll start getting this show on the road". Off his stunned expression Chuck shrugs, "everybody’s got needs".

  
Later on he tries to get a sense of Cas as a fighter. He's a small man, but its clear he can handle himself, despite the fact hes almost entirely off his rocker on whatever substances he can get his hands on. When it comes to planning the strategy, he notices how future Deans' eyes flick to Cas more than anyone else. Any advice he's looking for, he's expecting from Cas, rather than the rest of this rag tag crew. In the car, there is a moment of sudden total lucidity from future Cas who grasps his shoulder almost exactly over the mark left there to say:

"He needs that, to keep going."

"And you just do whatever he wants?" Dean shoots back.

"I do what he needs to keep going."

Then the former angel turns away and starts chattering inanely in a way that makes Dean want to stove the man's head in.

  
Towards the end, before that final ambush, future Dean looks at him, his face wry and hard in a way Dean doesn’t recognise.

"You saw us didn’t you?" he rasps. Dean nods.

"Well, I'll tell you something for nothing, we 'kinda liked' Rhonda Hurley's pink panties, but we really, really, like that. Do with that bit of info whatever you want.”

He wants to protest, but his doppelganger has turned away already, “save it, I got no time for denials anymore.”

Future Dean starts walking away, but stutters over a half pace to turn back to look over his shoulder.

"And don’t for one second think Cas doesn’t know what he's walking in to - that Im sending him to his death. He knows."

"You told him?"

"I don’t need to. Cas always knows."

  
\---x---

  
“So what neat little life lesson do we take from that then?’ he throws at his brother.

  
Sam huffs out a long breath. "I don’t know"

  
They stare out into the darkness for a while.

  
"So" Sam starts "when you saw.. well.. that.. were you turned on?"

  
Dean considers, quiet, trying to be honest. Then he says "no, no I wasn’t. Mainly I was shocked"

  
Sam looks at him. "Truthfully?" he asks.

  
"Yeah, I think that's honest."

  
Sam frowns, his forehead does that wrinkle thing that shows he's thinking real, real hard.

  
"So how about this then. You see yourself in the future and one thing it does is it makes you decide you and me should stick together right?"

  
Dean nods. "So that guy isn’t you. Same guy, different choices." Dean nods again.

  
"So that’s what you took away from meeting him..you..in relation to me. What did you take away from meeting him...you..in relation to Cas?"

  
Dean frowns considering. "I don’t know..maybe..how close they were..that total unspoken loyalty, trust."

  
"OK then an how does that relate to you and Cas. I mean the now you and Cas?"

  
"I don’t know, I never really thought about that. I guess."

Dean's quiet for a while "I cant come up with anything coherent, but I guess I knew I could rely on Cas, hell or high water, he'd be there - give me what I need."

  
Sams eyes go huge. "And then, and then", he's excited now like he's decoded something. "And then…he wasn’t though was he? Instead of the faithful sidekick who goes to his death for you, he deceives you, betrays you."

  
Dean flinches from the memory but he gets it.

  
"Look Dean, that future guy isn’t you. In fact, just meeting him made you make decisions to be less like him. But maybe, just by seeing them together you got it in your head to trust Cas more than you would have otherwise?"

  
"And I got burned. So maybe, I should have been more like him?"

  
"Or maybe its not that simple. You and ..you... both with the trust and control issues right?" Dean wants to object but Sam gives him a look that screams and don’t you dare deny it. So he shuts his mouth.

  
"Right so with him its to such a degree that the only way he can put it aside, be intimate, is letting Cas hurt him. With you, its not that extreme, but you're still… " Sam gestures

  
Dean pouts obstinately.

  
"Oh come on Dean, you are like an angry bear. You gruff and growl your way through things. When you're being nice, its cos you are trying to charm something out of someone. And with Cas its doubly so. The way you two interact. You're close, but like with me, like with everyone, what's going on inside you, nobody knows. So yeah, maybe the idea of letting someone else take the lead attracts you because shit you’ve got a lot on your shoulders, you always have. Maybe all it is is because you never got to experience relying on anyone - you dont know how to ebb and flow between taking different roles. You know: sometimes you lead, sometimes they lead? Instead you always do it one way and then, the one time you decide to trust someone enough to do it the other way, you go too far. And you're so burned that you're stuck back to being the guy in control all the time. I mean you and Cas, you don’t talk, you don’t negotiate. You just rage and huff."

  
"We don’t just rage and huff. C'mon Cas and I, we get on, we have fun." There's hurt in Deans voice, but his brother needs to hear this.

  
"You get on, you have fun, but its all on your terms Dean. When Cas goes off whatever plan you set, do you talk? Do you even try to see it from his point of view? No you don’t, you just," Sam mimes an explosion

  
And suddenly Deans eyes are wet and Sam regrets it.

  
"You think, this thing with Lucifer, do you think Cas did that because of how I treat him?"

  
"I don’t know Dean, but the thing is: do you ever ask? Do you ever try to find out? You know what I noticed in what you told me, the bit I thought was totally exasperatingly 'Dean'? The bit where future you tells you in utter confidence that Cas knows hes being sent to his death. But who the fuck knows what Cas does or doesn’t know? Not you, not future Dean. Only that Cas and no one ever bloody asked him!"

Dean is sitting there trying to take it in and the wind goes out of Sam’s sails.

  
"Look, what Im saying is you and Cas, it sounds like so much has gone down between you. And you're hurting, over all of it. It's cut you up inside, I can see that now. But its like its all standing between you, getting in the way because you wont talk about any of it." Sam pushes his hair back off his brow, agitated and worried.

Dean and him, there's places they don't go with each other and right now he's deep in one of those places.

"I mean, I'm your brother. We spend 24/7 together, near enough. Whatever else, whatever else, no matter what, I know, I know, that you and I, we're brothers. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the most significant relationship you ever had was with the guy I think is just your best friend. I didn’t know you like guys. God I feel what you’ve told me so far is like the tip of the bloody ice berg. And already its so much that I cant understand how you kept it in all this time."

  
"Look Im just not much of a talker." 

  
"OK" huffs Sam. "But tonight. Tonight you are going to talk if I have to beat it out of you."

  
Dean gives him a look.

  
Suddenly Sam snorts. "Look we got shackles in Baby’s trunk, if I need to I will tie you up, inflict pain…we can have a fucking therapy sex dungeon if that’s what it takes."  
They are both laughing now.

  
"Dude that is so wrong"

  
"Don’t test me Dean, if the only way to get you to open you up is tie you down and fuck you raw, Im game."


	5. Doing wrong and getting it right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last part, things Dean fucked up with Cas Set mainly in Season 9 Heaven Can Wait - Gas'n'Sip Cas.  
> And finally finally a happy ending set in Season 13. I feel they earned it.

When their laughter stops Sam looks at him, "so seriously you and Cas it never got...you know... with the shackles and the bondage?"

  
Dean shakes his head, "Nah man I mean, now that Ive told you about it, I guess I can see Im not dying to get tied up and tortured for kinks. I think you know, there's that thing about letting someone in, being open, not being in control. But the other stuff, the 2014 stuff. I guess - not? Maybe, like as a game, but that wasn’t a game, it was real. Like the only way that me could really connect with how he felt was have Cas do that to him. I don’t want to be that guy."

  
He smiles it’s a relief to sort through some of that. Then he goes on, "in fact you know when Cas went all God? One thing I remember is being scared he'd show up at Bobby's and what might go down like that.

Dean shakes his head. "And I was scared, not secretly hoping he'd show and make me do shit with him. I figured he wouldn’t when he let us go initially. But before that I don't know, when I realised how much he’d from hidden from me I was worried. I had trusted him, completely, and for a moment, like with Lisa, god with your soul, it hit me: what if he’d played me all along? I mean Cas, he could kill us by just putting his hand on us. How can you have a relationship with someone who could just blow you away like that,what happens when we fight? I must have been scared of getting hurt, literally.

He sighs, struggling with himself, loyalty is deep with Dean and the next thing hurts to say.

"Sometimes I still am, you know? Cas goes off the reservation and I think 'fuck, all we've got is our tricks and our secrets' and he knows most of them by now. On sheer power, even when he's just a semi-angel..."

Sam nods, it's occurred to him too that by letting Cas in the way they have, the brothers have taken an incredible risk. It's paid off, many fold, but he gets it.

"Cas is family now" is all he says.

"And then, and then", Deans words stutter over the painful memory. "Then when we lost him. Those things trying to tear their way out of him. I was so angry and there he was, on the floor, trying to work out what he feels ‘I feel regret’ ‘I feel shame' promising to make amends"

Sam looks puzzled

"Oh yeah, you never saw that." Dean wipes a hand over his eyes. "It reminded me so much of us together. 'I feel joy', 'I feel pleasure'. Except …all I wanted to do was hold him again and all I could do was hold him upright, help him blast those souls back into purgatory."

  
Dean sits for a long time, cradling his beer in his hands.

  
"It messed me up. I was so angry with him and I missed him." He sighs, "I missed him all the damn time, kept trying to soldier on like…but…"

"He hurt you"

Dean cant meet his eyes. "Yeah" he says quietly "that he did."

"And then he there he is again and he doesn’t remember anything. He’s married for Christ-sake, married! You should have seen me, Sammy, standing in that living room with 'Emmanuel' and his wife like a goldfish. And before the night’s out, we leave him in a sanatorium, out of his mind. "

  
Sam feels an emotion of his own well up, what Cas did for him, he has no words for. He's grateful.

  
"No no Sammy", Dean's seen his face. "Cas broke your head, that was on him. He broke it, he bought it."

  
"Maybe…but Dean he also got me out of the pit. Not the best job ever, but he did do it. That wall likely would have broken sooner or later. When he did it, he was out of his mind. He didn’t have to … take that on. He could have left it, he didn’t, he stepped up. If he hadn’t...I was done for: you couldn't fix it, I couldn't fight it."

Dean lets out a long exhale.

"It’s a mess" he says. "Total, freaking, epic, mess. And it never gets any clearer. With you, you know, I made my choices. It feels clear: its you and me: always. With Cas, I don’t know, sometimes we pull through, sometimes we ..just .. don’t."

"Like after purgatory?" Sam asks.

"Yeah we just fought and fought. Cas tried with the sorry and all and I just couldn’t accept it. I was so pissed at him…and he wasn’t right you know, I could feel that, something wasn’t right. That Naomi bitch. Then he runs off with the tablet... doesn't trust me.."

"Damn even in purgatory, all that time, me fighting to get us out, I hadnt understood where he was at at all. That he meant to stay and couldnt tell me. It had all felt so clear to me, pure, we were gonna fight tooth and claw and either die that way or make it out. But I never even thought Cas would see it different."

Sam frowns remembering "yeah well - I remember the aftermath, you could have cut that atmosphere with a knife"

"I was so messed up you know after Cas. For a while back then I felt like I had this big sign above my head ‘likes them supernatural’. Like that chick I picked up, the amazon. I could feel something wasn’t right when I was with her, but I kept going, thinking the best way to get over Cas was to get under someone else. Have a night with someone, doesn’t matter if Im not really into it, just go with it. I kept trying to let it go, to move on."

Dean takes another pull at his beer and goes on. "And then Cas was so messed up, you cant start something when someone’s that lost. Its not right. By the time I thought we might start something again, he was going to close heaven. Leaving earth, shutting the door behind him. I didn’t want him to leave, but what could I say? I knew it was something he had to do. He had to try to put it right, try to fix what he’d done. He wouldn't be Cas if he didn't try. If I'd said anything it would just have made it harder. So... well... I didnt. And then the angels fell and he was human."

"Huh" says Sam. "So let me ask you this. You said that part of the attraction was how powerful he was, so when he was human how did you feel?" 

"The first time I saw him human he was dead…I..I.." Dean doesn’t have words for the wave of terror, of regret, that washed through him back then. Seeing Cas dead, knowing he was too late to ever change anything. Sam squeezes his knee and Dean smiles sheepishly.

"You know after, at the bunker, I have the clearest memory him in that hoodie. He was so goddamn cute and I know I thought: 'oh god hes just my type'. Dont get me wrong, I like that hes got power, but its not just that. I just like, y'know, _Cas_ "

"Why didn’t you get him to stay? I know you two fought a lot before then but wouldn’t Cas have wanted to ... find his feet as a human, maybe stay with us - at least for a while? I never got why he insisted on leaving so quick."

Dean stares at Sam in shock. He's forgotten totally that he has never come clean to Sam about why Cas left back then. He considers lying, but this is the night of truth so he decides Sam can handle it.

"Gadreel" he says. "Gadreel wouldn’t have Cas there, too dangerous for him."

"And you let him?!"

Deans shoulders sag. "I let him leave, hell, I did worse than that."

So Dean tells him about the case he worked back when Cas was a gas station attendant.

  
\---x---

Set in Season 9 ep6 Heaven Cant Wait

  
He's been an ass all day. Ribbing Cas about his job, about his life. He cant seem to stop himself cos Dean Winchester is a douche. He knows why hes doing it, its because when he looks at Cas all he feels is an aching longing for him and it doesn’t matter that Cas cleans out toilets for a living Dean still fucking wants him. And he still…he still...respects…him. When Cas stands up for his job for what hes doing, he doesn’t agree with him, but he feels a reluctant, unwanted, respect. This is why he likes Cas after all. Because the guy insists on trying to do things right, whatever it is, he tries his best. Even if he does the wrong thing, its not for a want of effort. And Dean knows, in all his douche baggery, that that is something he admires.

  
And its because he feels guilty. It shouldn’t be this way. Cas should be with him and Sam in the bunker, not out here struggling to find a way to keep his head above water. He should be doing more for Cas, even just as a friend, he owes him that. But Sam, he cant let down Sammy and, in the end, he is always going to choose Sam.

So between those conflicting impulses he's settled for being an ass. And entirely not as a friend, he keeps stealing furtive glances at Cas. He has to work to keep his hands under control. The sneaky fuckers keep threatening to reach out for a touch, to straighten Cas' collar, imaginary lint is everywhere and his hands want to brush it off Cas. 

The final absurdity is driving Cas to his date and sitting there watching him walk up to that woman’s front door when everything in him wants to ask him to stop, to ask him to come back with him. What if Cas falls in love with her? What if he has sex with her? He should be supportive, he is being supportive, but he's jealous. Just like he was when Cas announced he’d had sex with that fucking reaper girl and all he could think was ‘was it as good as it was with me?’. Even though he knows that, no matter how good the sex, Cas would have been horrified at having sex with a possessed body, "the vessels owner Dean, they cant consent, I cant explain to you how disgusting it is."

He remembers that long ago conversation from back when they had nights when they talked like that. He misses those nights, he knows he shouldn't. Somewhere inside Dean fears that those nights and what they meant broke Cas, unleashed all that evil, because Dean is poison and everything he touches turns to shit. And so he persuades his friend to take that sweater vest off, to up his chances on his date. His friend looks weary and worn, he does want better for him.

Later, after the date that wasn’t, he refuses to take Cas straight back to the Gas’n’Sip. Opting for a diner instead “do you still like burgers now that you're human?” The smile Cas gives him.

"You need to take better care of yourself Cas, do you eat enough?"

Cas takes a long pull at his drink. "Im trying Dean" he says seriously, "being human is ... cumbersome, it’s a lot to learn: being hungry, needing sleep, urinating is very tiresome."

Dean hides his smile, only with Cas do you get to have a conversation like this one.

Cas goes on. "I'm making progress. I have most of the basics mastered now, its just…" he looks helpless for a second, "understanding how to connect with others…I don’t really understand how it works."

There's a pause before he goes on "I mean I think Im starting to understand it and then I realise I havent at all. For instance with Nora, I thought you know, she was interested in me and that I should try dating: its what humans do. But I had it all wrong. I don’t really understand, like I hid the rose from her because …I don’t know exactly…but I felt wrong for thinking it was a date and it felt important to hide that from her…that I got it wrong..but I don’t really understand why, or even if that was right."

Cas looks at him with such earnest enquiry that it tugs at Dean's heart.

Dean says: "its embarrassment, you know when you misunderstand something sometimes you cover. Easier for everyone."

Cas still looks puzzled, but he says:

“You were always a good teacher Dean. With you I felt … connection.”

Dean swallows, he doesn’t know what to say. They rarely touch on what is, or was, between them.

Cas looks down at his plate, it baffles him this human world of social interaction. As an angel, everything was so clear, he always had his brothers and sisters and they just were. His role was clear, he had his orders. There was no loneliness. With humans its like some complicated dance he doesn’t know the steps to and there is no where to learn. There should be a manual. He looks up.

"But this," he gestures at their table, "this is good. Good food" he smiles appreciatively and looks at Dean adding "and good company. It is good to have this time with you Dean." Its so sincere.

"Good to see you too buddy." Dean deflects. But as they make their way back to Baby he cant resist asking "How about you come back to my motel room for the night?"

"I don’t have my things, my" Cas rummages for the right word and looks pleased when he finds it, "my toiletries. I have toiletries now, I need them to keep me...maintained."

Dean hides another smile as he says "you can use mine."

"Okay but Dean." Cas has stopped walking clearly trying to think. "Dean I don’t know if I understand, what are you asking?"

Dean exhales what is he asking? Is he offering somewhere to crash, is he trying for something more? The thought of him and Cas sharing a room alone, what does he think is going to happen? If he’s honest with himself he knows exactly what parts of him are clamouring for. A chance to touch Cas, to find out if kissing him now he’s human will feel different. He wants Cas he knows that, but he cant have him. Its not possible, but he just wants more time, more Cas.

His voice comes out strangled: "I dont know Cas, whatever you want I guess. Look if all you want is a bed for the night. Im OK with that, really. I hate the thought of you camping out at that station. But …"

"Is this one of the things humans don’t say because of embarrassment?"

"Kind of, look, I miss you and .. truthfully? I do want you if you if you wanted to… but Im also your friend, I wouldn’t you know, not if you didn’t want to. So.."

By the time they pull up to the motel the atmosphere between in the car feels strained. Just admitting he wants Cas has put all manner of thoughts in his head. Keeping his hands to himself is getting even harder than it has been all day. He's kind of dreading the end of the drive because at least while driving the Impala he has to keep them on the wheel. Cas spends the ride looking straight ahead, locked up in himself so he guesses nothing is on offer anyway and hes ok with that, really he is. Its all so strange, when Dean picks up girls, theres the flirting and the smiling. Sex and the lead up is a good time. This is different. Attraction is there somewhere between them as it always is, but they are also used to not acting on it. No one's angling, teasing, working up to it. Instead they are frozen somehow. This isnt how sex goes in the Dean Winchester playbook and he can't work out if the fact they are friends makes him happy, because he does like Cas, or sad, because he wants more than friendship with Cas.

They have showers and Dean has some spare clothes for Cas to sleep in. There's just the one bed, but they decide to share it. He knows that's a risky move even as he's arguing breezily that its fine. They are friends, this is just what friends do, help each other out, no big.

Cas sits on the edge of the bed for a moment looking small and lost and Dean pretends he doesn’t want to put an arm round him. He knows that if he comforts him, he'll kiss him and he doesn’t think that if he kissed Cas he would have all that much control over everything else he knows he wants to do. So he gets in at the other side and stares at the ceiling. He's sharing a room with his friend, that's fine, he can do that. His friend has no where to stay, so hes putting him up. That is all.

  
Cas gets in, switches off the remaining lamp and moments pass. Dean lies rigid trying to calm his breathing and move towards sleep, but instead he can actually feel his heart rate rising as desire stirs restlessly. Cas is just _there_. And though he tries to call to mind every real world reason why this is a truly bad idea, he cant offer Cas anything right now and if they have sex wouldn’t other real world changes need to follow? Or would they? Couldnt they just bang and make a good night of it? Or would that just make him a shit? The bed is staring to feel like a raft in an endless ocean, like all there is in the world is him and Cas and all he can feel is longing.

He screws his eyes shut trying to get his body under control. His breathing is starting to speed up he's that turned on, he's getting hard and willing it away isnt working. He's going to have to go for a walk or to the bathroom in a minute. He fists his fingers into the sheet below to stop himself reaching for Cas, if he initiates something now, when hes promised Cas he wouldn’t…that... would be a bad thing.

And then Cas turns to him and reaches to touch his face. Dean opens one screwed up eye to peek at him. There's naked hunger in Cas’ eyes as he says just one word: "Dean."

And then they are kissing and pulling each other close and it feels a-fucking-mazing. Clothes are tossed aside, they are tracing every inch of each others’ bodies. It feels good, really, really, good. They are pressing, pulling, grinding against each other until they hit that sweet spot and it just builds, builds, builds and…Dean’s brain whites out.

  
Afterwards, Dean switches his light on so he can see Cas' face. They just look at each other wonderingly, its achingly tender, loving. He knows this isnt just sex, its something more. Panic hits him, he cant just have done this with Cas only to leave him here, but he's going to have to isn’t he? What choice does he have? He feels his throat close up at the anguish of it, he wants to give Cas more, to let Cas know what he means to him, how he feels. They are lying together in the afterglow, but he can sense there's a round two in there still. Cas’ hands are starting to wander and he knows he wants that again. Cas is looking him over with an intensity that makes heat coil in his stomach.

"What?"

"I cant see so many dimesions of you now" Cas says consideringly, "but you are still very beautiful."

  
Dean colours, “you cant say that," he blusters, "guys aren’t..you know.. beautiful. You could say Im ... handsome?”

  
But Cas just looks at him calmly and says “no I think you are beautiful.”

  
Somehow it chokes him up and the impulse to give Cas something in return makes him blurt, "I want you inside me"

Cas looks astonished "but Dean you don’t…" and then he stops "or maybe you do now?" he asks.

Dean shakes his head, "no, I haven't, I want you to be the first..to fuck me."

Cas sort of groans and Dean can tell his words have turned him on. "You'd like that wouldn’t you?" he pushes "to see me like that, moaning for you?" 

Cas reaction is a heated kiss. He shifts his weight on top of Dean, placing himself between Dean's legs as he leans down to kiss him some more. Closing his eyes he mimes thrusting over Dean's body, trying the idea out in his mind. Dean can see the flush of fresh arousal on him as he murmurs "yes, I would like you like that, very much."

Dean's heart is hammering in is chest. The impact of being raped has been that he's never let anyone even touch him back there, but he trusts Cas. And he wants so badly to have something to give Cas.

"Okay" he breathes.

But Cas has lent back onto his heels and is frowning at him. "Im human now" he says. "We'd need things…condoms."

"Bag" 

"And lubricant."

Dean stutters to a halt, he hadn’t thought about that. Before, when Cas was an angel, Cas’ grace had basically taken care of all that. There'd been no need to think through the mechanics of this.

"Er can we not do it without?"

"It would hurt you."

Dean feels determined to fling caution to the winds. He's doing this, he wants this: "I don’t care" he says "I want this with you."

Cas’ hands are gentle on his body "I don’t want to hurt you."

"Even if I want you to, even if I say its OK?" There's something desperate about this for Dean now, he wants the pain, something to make amends for the guilt he feels.

"Cmon Cas, I want you to fuck me and if it means you make me scream, I want that too. I can take it, you know I can take it."

But Cas just smiles "I know you could, you’ve never been afraid of pain Dean Winchester. But.." And Cas says it with calm finality: "I don’t hurt you."

Dean just stares at him. He knows there's no point to arguing this further and he feels foolish for having suggested it. Its dumb, he's dumb. But then Cas is kissing him again and touching him and it feels good, it feels right.

The next morning is seared in his memory as one of the worst mornings of his life. They wake tangled up together, still a little sex drunk and blissful. Pretending he doesn’t know the bombshell he's dropping, Dean's all casual: “That was great, guess I better drop you off at the Gas’n’Sip before I head back.”

He feels Cas freeze against him and closes his eyes, steeling himself for what he needs to do next, which is feign nonchalance like this has been just another hookup until he can escape into the bathroom.

By the time he's out of the shower and dressing Cas has gone quiet and withdrawn. He takes himself off into the shower avoiding Deans' eyes. As they are checking out Dean offers to pay for the room for a while ‘just til you find your feet you know?” Cas’ voice as he says quietly “please don’t pay for me” makes something inside Dean break.

The ride to the Gas’n’Sip is silent. As they pull up Cas is visibly, utterly confused. He moves as if to get out before pausing. "Dean, did I do something wrong?"

"No, no, last night." Deans throat is working convulsively fighting against all the things he wants to say but cant. Instead he says, "last night was perfect."

Cas nods trying to take it in. "But it was just last night.." he ventures finally.

Dean nods.

"I see says" Cas, "I thought…I guess… I thought..." Then he stops. "Is this one of those things where if you get it wrong its embarrassing and so everyone is meant to cover?" He asks timidly.

Dean cant bear to look at him.

"Im sorry" he croaks. "I should have been clearer."

"So it was," there are air quotes in Cas’ voice, "a ‘hook up’?"

Dean cant bring himself to call it that, or even to validate it with a nod. Instead he says again "it was perfect" willing Cas to get that he means it with every fibre of his being.

There is a long beat as Cas sits there taking it in.

"I enjoyed it too. Seeing you, being with you, it was good. Thank you, for everything."

  
"But its not enough" bursts from Dean before he can stop himself.

Cas cocks his head looking at him. "We do our best and enough is whatever we have." It sounds like something Cas has said many times.

  
\----x----

  
"So I told him I was sorry he couldnt stay and I was proud of how he was doing. And that we'd handle the angel thing for him" Dean finishes. He's only told Sam enough to let him work out they had sex and that it meant something to Dean.

"So you slept with him and then you just left and came back to the bunker?" Sam’s tone is incredulous.

Dean's smile is wry, "by way of detour including a rather spectacular bender, but basically"

His brother's face is so incredibly sad, Sam wants to hug him. But he doesn’t. Instead he asks:

"Why didnt you just tell him?"

"Tell him how I feel? How would that have helped Sam?"

Sam sighs, "no tell him _why_ you couldn’t bring him back to the bunker, tell him about Gadreel"

Dean looks stunned. "I never thought to do that he says I don’t really know why. I just thought I didnt have a choice."

"But you did have a choice."

"Ok I did have a choice, I chose you." Dean closes his eyes against pain and regret but when he opens them he says with absolute certainty.

"And if I had to do it over, if I had to make that choice again, even knowing how I feel now, I would still choose you."

Sam stares out into the night. He's grateful to Dean, beyond grateful. What Dean has done for him time and again goes beyond bounds. Dean brought him up. Looked after him, cared for him. He understands what that cost his brother. But as adults Dean has continued to sacrifice himself for Sam. Dean has done the unbelievable for Sam time and again. And he gets that this is just who Dean is. And he loves him for it. But he didn't know that Dean gave up his chance at something more with Cas for him. He's not going to even try to think through the intricate web of guilt and loyalty all this invokes in himself. Not tonight. Tonight is about Dean. So he says:

"Remember Robin?

"Which one?" Sam rolls his eyes, Dean damn well knows which one.

"Robin the waitress, your sweetheart at that boys home"

"And?"

"You left her because of me, when you really didnt want to."

Dean nods, thinking back to that time, ditching the girl he was totally into on the night of the school dance. His first love.

"Same with Cas"

"Yeah genius, and your point?"

"Well" says Sam "did you ever call her, ever write to her and explain why?"

"No"

"Why not?"

Dean looks puzzled "because, because, well what would have been the point? I left her"

Sam looks at him and says quietly "But you could have told her _why_ and the point would have been that she could have understood why you did it."

"Boils down to the same thing though I left. Why doesn't matter. Besides I couldn't have told her, could have said that..about you."

Sonething dawns in Sam's head. About Dean and Dean's ironcast ideas of loyalty.

"You know when you're a child that kind of conflicted loyalty - that’s hard. Its complicated. And maybe you couldn’t admit at that age the things you were giving up, the sacrifices that you felt you had to make and how you really felt about them. Basically that even though it was the right choice, it caused you pain, it caused hurt for you and for others. And maybe, as a child I wouldn't have been able to hear that from you"

Sam looks at Dean hard, willing him to get it. "But now…now..you are an adult and you know choices can get complicated and messy and painful. So instead of hiding those difficult choices you have to make from everyone, you could have told Cas why you had to make that choice. And well.. I don’t know what would have happened…but it cant really have gone any worse could it?"

Dean is trying to take it in, really trying, “but I felt like the one thing I couldnt tell him was why, like Id be letting you down. Like you arent.."

Sam sighs. "I think you confuse being loyal with never admitting the cost of it." He looks his brother straight in the eyes wanting him to get how gently and lovingly he means this. "I think its cos you still try to treat me like a child. Like your kid brother you have to protect at all costs and who cant handle the thought that that might come at a price to you. But Im not a child anymore. Im a grown man Dean. I can handle the thought that looking after me cost you, cost you big, even while … Im grateful man, I owe you, you know. And I know, I know…"

There are tears in Sams voice

And Dean is immediately solicitous, "Sammy no, c'mon"

And Sam wipes at his eyes ruefully. "Ok Im drunk but this" he gestures at them. "We need to change this Dean. Somehow we need to find a way to change how we do this. You need to let me grow up and you need to let yourself go after what you want. Or at least admit when you decide you wont have what you want"

"Yeah yeah" Dean nods gruffly tearful himself.

"Ok then" Sam pats his brother energetically on the shoulder. "We are going to get Cas back, we are going to kick Lucifer in the ass and then you are going to tell Cas you love him."

Dean looks taken aback "hey Im not sure I phrase it like that."

"Dammit, phrase it however you bloody like, but that’s whats happening alright!?"

\---x----

  
Of course it takes a while. Far too long a while in Sam’s opinion.

They get Cas back – yay.

But then their Mom is back too. And Dean uses that as an excuse to put things on hold on the 'tell Cas everything' front because well, Mom, and getting to know Mom. And Dean is so scared of disappointing her that the idea of telling her he likes guys is something he just cant face. Sam thinks its stupid and he thinks their Mom has figured it out anyway because, actually once you know, its so damn obvious. His mother, whatever her faults, is a perceptive woman.

And then Cas dies and Dean's despair pervades the bunker. He's never seen Dean like this, devastated. Sam's carrying him as best he can, but Sam is scared. The way Dean acts, he cant even pull it together when they are hunting anymore. His brother is suicidal, depressed. He's taking it out on the kid and Sam wants to honour Cas by doing a good job with Jack. He knows, if Dean could get over his grief, he'd want to honour Cas that way too. Instead Dean's pain is boiling over as anger as it usually does. His drinking is out of control. Sometimes in the dead of night Sam can hear him, slurring drunken prayers in the kitchen as he makes his way through one bottle after another begging a god he resents to: “please, please, please, please, just bring him back”.

And then it happens, a phone call, a car ride - Dean doesnt dare say out loud what he hopes he's going to find: and there is Cas. Dean is rooted to the spot and Sam’s impatience with the pair of them is about to explode. How many more times does he have to watch them do this dance? Then Dean goes for it.

Sam: “I don’t even know what to say”

Dean: "I do"

Dean takes a few swift strides towards the angel before embracing him and kissing an incredulous, but pleased-looking Cas, babbling “I love you, I love you, I love you” over and over again. And Sam is trying to find some way of tactfully not being there. But he's also just glad he gets to see this.

\---x---

And so, on a hot highway just outside Dodge City, Kansas, Dean adjusts that absurd hat on Cas' head and savours the familiar exasperation of Cas not getting a movie reference. Tombstone ‘the one with guns and tuberculosis’ – Cas will never make a movie critic.

  
“I'm your huckleberry,” Cas burls.

Dean feels every part of him melt, he knows his face has gone totally soft and sappy and he does not care one bit.

“Damn right you are”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So pleased I got this all out. Comments would be great. 
> 
> I like this story, but its different I guess. I wonder what other people make of it? Ive spent a frankly embarrassing amount of time trying to work out why I find this relationship so utterly compelling. I know I know, there is the obvious: two gorgeous men stare at each other a lot and the camera work keeps doing these romantic trope framings. But there's more to it than the opportunity to letch, or a bit of nudge nudge wink wink, isnt there? To me, there is definitely a version where this is simply a great love story plus an incredible character study esp in relation to Dean. I think a huge amount is due to the parallels between these two characters, how they are similar in ways that make an intimate relationship plausible and satisfying at a symbolic level. Id like to think there is more to what Im so into here than the enjoyment of watching good looking men play tough guy, get bloodied up and shed the occasional man tear. Although tbh maybe that's good too and I should just go with it?
> 
> There is also some really A-grade acting esp from Jensen Ackles imo in terms of hinting at these deeper feelings. Ive spent forever trying to work out if hes just so pretty that I project onto him what I want to see or whether there is an awful lot of very skilled, very subtle acting. For me the Bad Boys episode where he sees his teenage love again clinched it because you can see hes doing many similar things, just more muted, in the Cas scenes, so I worked that in here. I dont really know anything about acting or about how TV is made but I find it incredibly well done. I do think its a very clear deliberate parallel to the Cas relationship and because its text rather than subtext is easier to feel certain that Ackles is doing it on purpose and that makes me think this is fully intentional on the part of the show at this stage. Although I think its also entirely plausible that these parallels and commonalities simply provide a basis for an incredible friendship. 
> 
> Anyway so this was my attempt to flesh that out as a love story. Im pleased its done because its been driving me nuts. I hope folk enjoy it.
> 
> There are a few unacknowledged direct quotes from the show in this chapter including the sex description which is verbatim more or less Dean's dialogue at the chastity group. I liked the thought that he's actually talking about sex with Cas rather than sex in general. What I couldnt work in is the line about 'always the adios' smoothly, but the inference that the morning after is awful is there. The GasnSip episode is just a couple of episode earlier.  
> The 'it was perfect' is a sideways nod to Deans aside to Cas 'not all hook ups are perfect" which i think is somewhere later that season. Although I dont think that really fits cos any way you look at that scene its crass.  
> Plus more obviously Im your huckleberry and the reunion scene. To me the subtext of Dean standing under a cross going 'I do' is just...well, yeah, that was a moment.


End file.
